The parents of Tiffany Valiante have filed a groundbreaking lawsuit alleging their 18-year-old daughter was murdered in a hate crime, not a suicide as authorities concluded a decade ago. The lawsuit, filed under New Jersey’s Crime Victims’ Bill of Rights Act, seeks to compel state agencies to release withheld evidence from the case.
Tiffany, a gay student-athlete from Mays Landing, was struck by a New Jersey Transit train just before midnight on July 12, 2015. She had been preparing to start college on a volleyball scholarship.
Authorities closed the case as a suicide within 12 hours, but the family’s legal team argues critical evidence was ignored or mishandled. The family’s attorney Paul D’Amato said newly recovered text messages reveal Tiffany was targeted because of her sexual orientation in the months before her death, with threatening and hate-filled messages pointing to persistent harassment.
Forensic pathologist Dr. Wayne Ross, who reviewed the case, believes Tiffany was murdered and her body placed on the tracks to disguise the crime. He states that homicide should be ruled out before considering suicide in suspicious death cases.
The medical professional who pronounced Tiffany dead also expressed concerns about the surgical precision of her injuries, which were uncharacteristic of typical train strikes according to the lawsuit.
The case gained international attention through Netflix’s Unsolved Mysteries series. A Change.org petition demanding the case be reopened has garnered over 15,000 signatures and nearly 206,000 views worldwide. The filing is believed to be the first under New Jersey’s Crime Victims’ Bill of Rights Act.
